I want to make it clear that the black race did not come to the United States culturally empty-handed. The role and importance of ethnic history is in how well it teaches a people to use their own talents, take pride in their own history and love their own memories.
I want to tell my jokes. I want to have time with my children. I want to entertain people. And at one point, I'll walk away from show business. But I don't want to walk away empty-handed.
Born empty handed,
Die empty handed.
I witnessed life at its fullest,
Empty handed.
Los Angeles feels empty and overrated. I struggle with it as a holiday destination. It's the sort of place where you need to know some locals, otherwise it just feels so empty.
Beginning empty handed and alone frightens the best of men. It also speaks volumes of just how sure they are that God is with them.
Otis barreled towards them empty-handed, before apparently realizing that a) he was empty-handed and b) charging towards a large body of water to fight a son of Poseidon was maybe not a good idea.
Greed arises only because your present moment is empty, and to live in an empty moment hurts very much. To forget it you project greed into the future, thinking that tomorrow things are going to be better, a lottery is going to open in your name. But of course you have to wait for tomorrow, it cannot be just now - and tomorrow never comes. All that comes is always the present moment, which is empty. Greed is because we don't know how to live the present moment in its total richness.
What's worse: to be idle while someone dies, or to be exiled and empty-handed?
In each life there comes at least one moment, which, if recognized and seized, transforms the course of that life forever. Rely, therefore, on radical trust, even though the moment may call for you to leap empty-handed into the void.
I got so excited about it. I was like, 'Yes! I won a Grammy!' And then my manager was like, 'No, you did not win a Grammy. You were part of a song that won a Grammy. Rihanna won a Grammy.'
Strange how when you're young you have no memories...Then one day you wake up and BOOM, memories overpower all else in your life, forever making the present moment seem sad and unable to compete with a glorious past that now has a life of its own.
The very actions themselves can be a meditation. For me, walking is certainly a meditation if I walk for awhile. First my mind is busy and I'm thinking about different things and after a while that starts to fall away and I start to become very present in the moment. And that feeling of being present in the moment is being. That's when we know we're connecting with being energy.
You know, the same percentage of people are gay and lesbian as are left-handed. Let's try to figure that out. How can it be that a left-handed person can get married to another left-handed person. Left-handed people can do anything they want. . . . I say, give homosexuals the same rights we give left-handed people.
But I don't bet the farm on any of those possibilities, either. I'm also preparing, intelligently, to walk away from this, and walk away from it happy to have had the experience.
I know what it feels like to walk out in front of a sold-out crowd of a thousand people that are there for you, and how good that feels, but as an opener, you just have to train yourself to think that it's going to be harder.
What did winning a Grammy do for me? It made me want to get rid of my Grammy, pack it away, and never see it again. It made me not want to speak to anyone who wanted to speak about my Grammy.